The Vatican theologian says unless the Pope reaffirms Church teaching on morals, the faith and the sacraments, ‘the apostasy will deepen and the de facto schism will widen.’ In a forceful interview with Italian Vaticanist Aldo Maria Valli, Msgr. Nicola Bux has warned that the current pontificate is issuing statements that are generating “heresies, schisms, and controversies of various kinds” and that the Holy Father should issue a profession of faith to restore unity in the Church.In the interview, published Oct. 13 but overlooked due to the Youth Synod taking place in Rome last month, the theologian consultor to the Congregation for the Causes...

A Hidden Mass in the Gospel of the Ten Lepers Msgr. Charles Pope â€˘ November 14, 2018 â€˘ Healing of the Ten Lepers, by J. Tissot (1886-94)The Gospel for Wednesday of the 32nd Week of the Year teaches that the Mass is the perfect offering of thanks to the Father. It does so in a remarkable and almost hidden way, but it is right there for us to see if we have eyes to see it.The Gospel telling the story of the ten lepers contains all the essential elements of Holy Mass and thus it reminds us once that...

Franciscan Media Image: The high altar statue of Saint Gertrude the Great with a mouse on the distaff| Grafenbach, Austria | photo by Rollroboter Saint Gertrude the Great Saint of the Day for November 14 (January 6, 1256 â€“ November 17, 1302) Â Saint Gertrude the Greatâ€™s Story Gertrude, a Benedictine nun in Helfta, Saxony, was one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher Saint Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called Â“nuptial mysticism,Â” that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ. Her spiritual life was a deeply personal union...

Six men filed a class action and racketeering lawsuit Tuesday against the Vatican and America’s Catholic bishops, arguing they were aware of but ignored evidence of rape and sexual abuse within the clergy. The 80-page complaint, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asks a judge to order a personal apology from the church hierarchy to abuse victims, to demand a full public accounting of all cases dating back to 1940, and to compensate victims and create a medical monitoring fund to help in recovery. The plaintiffs all say they were abused when they were children attending churches from...

Last Sunday, as the Bishops of the United States began to make their way to Baltimore, those blessed with the opportunity to attend the Tridentine Mass heard Matthew 13:24-30 read as the Gospel. The following is a synopsis of this parable as I heard it explained by a diocesan priest who wishes to remain anonymous:The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.Why would an enemy—no matter how vicious—expend an incredible amount of energy to sow weeds?...

A Word of Encouragement from Elisha the Prophet Msgr. Charles Pope â€˘ November 13, 2018 â€˘ There is an old saying, Â“Stop telling God how big your storm is and start telling the storm how big your God is.Â” In other words, we often need to shift our focus, building up our trust and confidence. Because we are so wired for fear, we tend to overestimate the power and shrewdness of demons, or of our enemies, or of whatever it is we fear. At the same time, we tend to underestimate the power of God, the power of our...

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun flew to Rome and handed a seven-page letter to Pope Francis appealing for him to pay attention to the crisis facing the underground church in China. The Hong Kong emeritus bishop on Nov. 8 told ucanews.com that underground clerics have cried to him since the Vatican-China deal on the appointment of bishops. "They said officials have forced them to become open, to join the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and to obtain a priest's certificate with the reason that the pope has signed the Sino-Vatican provisional agreement," said Cardinal Zen. He said some parts of the agreement...

In the early days of Baltimore, if a Catholic leader had proposed a religious gathering at a swanky hotel, he would have been ridiculed. Such a suggestion would have been taken as a mark of spiritual unseriousness. Ascetic, serious-minded bishops might meet in monasteries or religious houses to discuss matters of grave importance to the Church. But a hotel? That practice only became popular after worldly, faux-populist fetishes saturated the post-Vatican II Church.And so now every November Catholics in the pews have to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the bishops to enjoy a cushy get-away at such...

BALTIMORE (ChurchMilitant.com) - At the Silence Stops Now rally in Baltimore on Tuesday, international child protection attorney Liz Yore, Esq. called out, "We need to protect the children!" "And like the courageous laity who led the fight to protect the unborn children," she proclaimed, "the laity will lead the fight to protect the children from the sexual predators in the Catholic clergy." "We faithful Catholics," she declared, "are fed up with the dreaded silence of a haughty hierarchy!" "This haughty hierarchy covered up and participated in the rape of our innocent boys and our precious seminarians," she said, indicating the mass of Catholic bishops meeting across the...

[The following article was originally published in the September issue of The Catholic Inquisitor. With the USCCB meeting presently taking place in Baltimore, along with news that Rome has acted to prevent the bishops’ vote on the proposed Standards of Episcopal Conduct – and this even as the clerical homo-predator scandal dominates Catholic and secular news – it is well worth either reading for the first time or revisiting. – ED.] IntroductionIt’s been more than 23 years since the Cardinal Hans Groër, O.S.Bsex abuse scandal erupted in Vienna, Austria.Recently, while researching the Cardinal McCarrick case, I had occasion to go...

Franciscan Media Image: Statue of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in the portico of the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary in Pompei | photo by Dario Crespi Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini Saint of the Day for November 13 (July 15, 1850 â€“ December 22, 1917) Â Saint Frances Xavier Cabriniâ€™s Story Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized. Her deep trust in the loving care of her God gave her the strength to be a valiant woman doing the work of Christ.Refused admission to the religious order which had educated her to be...

Yesterday, during the opening session of the US Bishops’ fall annual meeting, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the American bishops’ conference, announced that the Holy See had intervened to stop the bishops from voting on two measures designed to tackle the Church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis. The Vatican has inexplicably ordered the bishops to wait on taking further action to address the crisis until after a February meeting in which the pope plans to gather the heads of the bishops’ conferences from around the world.Ed Condon of the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports that the crowd of assembled bishops were “visibly surprised”...

Writing in Catholic World Report, Dr. Douglas Farrow, a professor of Theology and Christian Thought at McGill University, joins the growing ranks of “mainstream” commentators who are, at last, one with traditionalists in sounding the alarm about what Farrow calls “the troubling Bergoglio pontificate…”. (I hasten to add that the very emergence of the term “traditionalist” in the life of the Church, signifying simply those Catholics who have continued to believe and practice the unreconstructed Faith after Vatican II, as is their God-given right and duty, demonstrates the gravity of the crisis that has led to this troubling pontificate.) I...

Progressive pundit Cenk Uygur argued recently the Bible is pro-abortion. The founder of The Young Turks — a far-left outlet — employed a passage from the Old Testament to make his case. Uygur, taking Numbers 5 out of context, claimed it’s “a fact” Scripture endorses abortion. “You’re wrong about your Bible,” he said, speaking to Christians. “You’ve been misled; you’ve been lied to. Your religious and political leaders have kept you in ignorance. The Bible is actually pro-abortion — that’s a fact.” Uygur went on to suggest abortion has never been a religious issue. “It was never about the Bible,”...

The Sins of Priests Msgr. Charles Pope â€˘ November 12, 2018 â€˘ The Book of the Prophet Malachi is set forth as a kind Â“rivÂ” (a Hebrew word for a lawsuit, indictment, or controversy) by God. The Lord presents a legal case of sorts, which convicts ancient Israel of numerous deficiencies and calls for their repentance. The case shows a body of evidence that is just as true today as it was then. God has plenty to say and we have much to hear, much of which to repent.As we consider the sins of the priests enumerated below, please...

Franciscan Media Image: Icon of St. martyr Josaphat Kutsevych, Archbishop of Polotsk | photo by Mykola Swarnyk Saint Josaphat Saint of the Day for November 12 (c. 1580 â€“ November 12, 1623) Â Saint Josaphatâ€™s Story In 1964, newspaper photos of Pope Paul VI embracing Athenagoras I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, marked a significant step toward the healing of a division in Christendom that has spanned more than nine centuries.In 1595, the Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus and five other bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome. John KunsevichÂ—who took the name Josaphat in religious...

Welcome to this special report from the bishops' conference in Baltimore where, moments into the meeting, conference President Cdl. Daniel DiNardo dropped the bombshell that Pope Francis has pulled the rug out from under the feet of the U.S. bishops and ordered them to cancel their expected Thursday vote in what to do about the priestly sex abuse crisis, most of which is homosexual predatory abuse. DiNardo appeared disturbed by the orders from the Vatican having been given to him at essentially the last minute late last night. Following that, Papal Nuncio Christophe Pierre got up and essentially said great strides...

The calm before the storm Some are cautiously looking forward to it with hopeful expectations. Others are fearing it with dread and despair.It’s the upcoming reform and restructuring of the Roman Curia. As Massimo Faggioli recently pointed out, it could be one of the most significant structural changes Pope Francis makes in a determined effort -- contested by some members of the hierarchy -- to bring about a more decentralized and synodal Church.The Jesuit pope has spent his entire pontificate working on curia reform with the help of an international group of senior advisors called the Council of Cardinals...

Vatican Cancels US Bishops’ Vote on Sex-Abuse Reform Measures Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, has told the American bishops that they will not vote on two key proposals that had been expected to form the basis for the Church’s response to the sexual-abuse crisis. The news came at the beginning of the U.S. bishops’ conference fall general assembly, meeting in Baltimore Nov. 12-14. The instruction to delay consideration of a new “Code of Conduct” for bishops and the creation of a lay-led body to investigate bishops accused of misconduct came directly from the Holy See, Cardinal...

The Office of Bishop Msgr. Charles Pope â€˘ November 11, 2018 â€˘ credit: J. Lippelmann, Catholic StandardFortuitously, the first reading for this Monday, which is the day that the annual fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Baltimore begins, speaks to the qualifications of a bishop. The full reading from Titus is as follows:Paul, a slave of God and apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of GodÂ’s chosen ones and the recognition of religious truth, in the hope of eternal life that God, who does not lie, promised before time began,...